Sunday, that one day

Church was both horrible and wonderful at the same time today.

First of all we were fifteen minutes late due to a certain three-year-old's dress not being "twirly" enough. I won't mention any names but I will mention that said child threw herself on the ground in a fit of passion and it took several precious minutes to get her into a suitably "twirly" dress.

To top off that little fiasco we had to walk to church. In the snow. In April.

What gives, Mother Nature?!

Sacrament meeting was horrible. Actually, it was likely wonderful but I missed that vibe due to my horribly misbehaving children.

Screaming. Screeching. Fighting. Biting.

It was awful.

We spent the whole hour trying to either keep them entertained/separated or taking them into the hallway where they could scream without bothering quite so many people.

By the end of sacrament meeting I was about ready to tear my hair out. So was Andrew.

Rachel's in the Sunbeam class so she's easily disposable. Miriam, on the other hand, we were stuck with.

Or so I thought.

At church kids can go into the nursery when they are 18 months old. Miriam will be 18 months old on April 25th so technically she shouldn't be in nursery until May 1st—three weeks away!

There's no way we would survive that long so Andrew went up to the nursery leader and asked her if Miriam could come into nursery this week. She said yes—then said that she had wondered why Miriam wasn't in nursery because she thought she was long since 18 months old.

And she would think that because Miriam has been walking for like six months now. There are two other babies in our ward who were born in October; one just started walking about a month ago...the other isn't walking yet. And yet both of them entered the nursery before Miriam. I realize it's technically fair since those babies are older than Miriam...but how unfair is that?! Here I am, wrangling a walking cyclone of a child while other parents get these darling creatures who docilely sit on laps?!

And the docile lap-sitters get to go into nursery while my cyclone baby doesn't!? What?!

Parenting 505, people, Parenting 505.

I realize it's all perspective and I'm sure Miriam's peers offer their parents another set of challenges, still...I'm just constantly reminded of just how precocious my children are.

Today after choir, which is held at our home, a woman stopped to admire a picture of Rachel in the hallway. She asked how old Rachel was when the photo was taken.

"Oh, under a year," answered Karen, "Maybe nine months. How old was Rachel in this picture?"

"Six months," I said.

"Six months!?" the woman exclaimed, "And she's sitting up like that?"

Don't all babies do that?

Miriam was a much calmer baby than Rachel and yet she was also sitting up by six months.

A friend recently mentioned off-handedly that her eight-month old had embarked on the world of army-crawling. Miriam, once again, is my calm child...but she had already conquered the stairs by eight months and had begun army-crawling long before that. I had wondered about my friend's baby, actually, a couple of weeks ago when she put her down on a blanket on the floor. Instead of getting up and following her mom around, the baby just laid on her back and cried. She didn't roll over or anything.

"Oh, wow!" I said, "If that had been my baby she would have followed me across the room."

"Really?!" my friend said, "Surely not at her age."

"Oh, yes—at her age."

Shoot. Rachel was walking  running at 10 months.

Parenting 505, people. Parenting 505.

Rachel's been talking about flying a lot lately....I'm going to have to keep my eye on her.

Anyway, Miriam went, quite happily, into nursery with the other babies and we had a glorious time teaching primary without having to tame Miriam. I'm looking forward to next Sunday already...now that I know we have nursery to look forward to!